The Sixties were also the time of The Space Race - Following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the first manned launches took place in 1961 (First Russian Yuri Gagarin in April, followed closely by Alan Shepherd in May.) The idea of people actually entering space for the first time led to a new fascination with Science, and a corresponding boom to Science Fiction. John F. Kennedy ordered the seemingly impossible - putting men on the Moon. After his death, America's resolve was steeled, and the course was set. The route to the Moon was very nearly derailed by the disastrous Apollo 1 fire, claiming the lives of 3 American astronauts in a test. Over a year of unmanned testing went on, trying to repair the mistakes. A return to space flight in late 1968 led to an epic Christmas flyby of the Moon by Apollo 8, one of the most watched television broadcasts in history. Finally, in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon, fulfilling Kennedy's mission and marking the first time a human being had walked on another celestial body.

That's what you learn watching TV and movies about the Sixties. No Sixties Montage is complete without them. If not set to Jimi Hendrix playing "All Along the Watchtower," then "Get Together" by the Youngbloods.

But if you watch TV and movies from the Sixties, it's as if half of that stuff never happened. Some of the Sixties' landmark events, such as the Stonewall Riots in 1969 that kicked off the gay rights movement, were barely acknowledged until the 1990s. Our cultural memory has selected The Grateful Dead and Aretha Franklin from a musical landscape that had a lot more Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass than seems sonically possible; and the squares of the first half of the decade actually dressed a lot cooler than the hippies of the latter half, who frankly come off as a little grimy. A standout example of this is The Andy Griffith Show whose title actor portrays a Southern sheriff and in which not a whisper of the civil rights movement is mentioned.

Dangerously-Short Skirt: Initially knee-length during the dawn of the decade, then rose to 'mini' by mid-decade, then alternatives like 'micro', 'midi', and 'maxi' arrived late in the decade. The rising hemlines reminisced the The Roaring Twenties, when skirts rose or fell just as economy rose or fell.

Marvel Comics ; while it's true that the company that would later be known as Marvel (Atlas,) existed before then, the Marvel universe proper didn't exist until 1961. And once it did, Marvel would prove to be one of the most well-known, influential, and (at the time,) ground-breaking comic companies not just of that era, but decades later. Even today, you'd be hardpressed to find someone who hasn't at least heard of Marvel.

China Beach was a War/MedicalDrama that ran on ABC from 1988 to 1991. It featured a group of characters serving at the real China Beach Rest and Recreation (R & R) station and the fictional 510th Evacuation Hospital during the Vietnam War.

Inspector George Gently uses the social upheaval of the sixties as the basis of some of its plots, such as how birth control was only legal if one was married.

Jimmy Macdonald's Canada, which dealt with the mental breakdown of one of the aforementioned newcasters]] in the face of change

Mad Men, which sort of charts the transition from the '50s to the '60s. The series starts in March 1960, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was still President and the cultural vibe was very much '50s. At the end of Season 3, JFK gets shot, and Season 4 (starting on Thanksgiving 1964 and going into 1965) features SCDP in a very Sixties office (much of the furniture and interior design looks like it was done by Eero Saarinen) with at least one character doing some very Sixties things.

Not to be outdone, DC Comics revived many of their characters in this era as well. The Barry Allen Flash, Hal Jordan Green Lantern and Ray Palmer The Atom were new characters sharing only the names and powersets of their predecessors, but many other DC characters were simply retooled for the new era, including their Long Runners like Superman and Batman.